#i get why people would rather treat older media as the better evidence but its very clear that they havent been following this

[kagender]

why are we sending people anons about tamama age discourse in the big 2025... can you guys drop it by 2026 thanx

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - One Angry Princess

There’s two halves to this episode. The first is a well constructed, if over simple, mystery for the kiddos to solve. The other is a failed attempt at being ‘deep’ and ‘mature’.  

Summary: Attila is finally opening up his own bakery, but people generally don't want to stop by because of his scary helmet. The next day, Monty's Sweet Shoppe is destroyed, and Attila is arrested. He is about to be banished from the kingdom, but Rapunzel makes an appeal to investigate the matter further. 

The Episode is Meant to be a Homage to 12 Angry Men, but Misses the Point of the Original Film

So for those who haven’t seen the movie, (though really you should) 12 Angry Men is about a jury trying to decide if an accused person is guilty of a violent crime. At first the evidence seems clear, but one lone juror refuses to vote guilty until the evidence has been gone over again. One by one he convinces the other men to vote not guilty as they each have to face they’re own personal biases.

Sound familiar? 

In the show Rapunzel is the sole believer in Attila’s innocence despite evidence to the contrary. She insists on investigating herself while challenging everyone else’s personal biases. 

The difference?

12 Angry Men is a hard hitting look at how privilege, prejudice, and cognitive bias can interfere with the American judicial system. None of the jurors are named, but they are all middle class, presumably Christian, white guys. And that is the point. They are all different from the accused; a young, poor, arguably non-white teen (the play is intentionally vague about the kid’s race so that you can slot any minority in there) who has a history of getting into trouble. If you were to change the ethnicity, race, gender, class, or age of any of the 12 characters then you would suddenly have a very different story. It’s their backgrounds and pre-formed opinions that inform their decisions. Even the main protagonist is not exempt from re-examining his own personal biases. 

Meanwhile the writers of Tangled: the Series are too busy showing off how clever Rapunzel is to actually deal with the themes of injustice and bigotry that they added in themselves in the first place.

Rapunzel Knowing Attila Before Hand Weakens the Message

In 12 Angry Men none of the jurors know the accuse. In fact, they can’t know him. It’s against the law. In order to have an impartial jury, no one can have any ties to either the defendant or the prosecution, and they must not have knowledge of the case or have had specific experiences that might cause them to be biased or unfair. 

Rapunzel being Attila’s friend means that she already has her own bias and an invested interest in making sure Attila goes free. She’s not acting out of the simple goodness of her heart here. She’s doing something that directly benefits herself. 

I don’t expect a children’s fantasy show to recreate the US judicial system with all of the complexities there in, but I do expect it to uphold it’s heroine as the selfless person it claims her to be. Yet the show constantly undermines this supposed character trait by only having her help the people she befriends, and only if that help doesn’t require anything emotionally challenging or mentally taxing from her.   

How much more powerful would this episode be if Rapunzel was defending a stranger or someone she actively disliked? Imagine if it was Monty who was being accuse and Raps had to swallow her pride in order to do what is right. But that would require the show having Rapunzel actually learn something instead of placing her on a pedestal. It would also mean giving Monty a reason to exist rather than keeping him around to be a convenient red herring.      

Rapunzel Shouldn’t Have to Prove Attila’s Innocence 

Rather than have a courtroom drama the show opts to have a ‘whodunit’ story instead. This unfortunately gives the implication that Corona’s judicial system runs on a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ mantra, which is backwards to any humane legal system. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’, ‘reasonable doubt’, ‘due process’, are the cornerstones of our modern social ethics. 

In 12 Angry Men, we never find out if the accused actually committed the crime or not. That is because his actual innocence isn’t the point of the story. It’s about whether or not the system is working like it should or if it’s being compromised by human error. 

Once again, I don’t expect a recreation of the US judicial system, but if you’re writing a story for a modern audience then you need to reinforce modern morals. Simply crouching Corona’s legal system as ‘of the times’ or ‘fantasy’ while ignoring why we no longer have such systems in place reduces the story to puerile fare. 

It also means that show’s writers didn’t put enough thought into their world building. 

No One Calls Out the Obviously Corrupt System 

The show has interwoven throughout its ongoing narrative themes of classism, injustice, abuse, and authoritarianism, but then fails to follow through on those themes by not having any of the protagonists actually examine any of these issues. They just sit there in the background, even as the show tries it darndest to present Rapunzel as an arbiter of reform. However a person can’t bring about change if they can’t even admit that there is a problem to begin with.   

In this episode alone we have

Banishment is considered a reasonable punishment for an act of vandalism. A crime that is usually considered only a misdemeanor unless the damage goes over a certain amount. Keep in mind that not even most felonies would be given such a punishment in the real world

Introduces the prison barge that regularly carries away convicts. In the past ‘undesirables’ would be shipped off to prison colonies as a form of persecution. Attila and every other person we see subjected to Corona’s legal system are of a lower class. 

Many prejudge Attila based off his appearance, lower class, and past upbringing. However, it is either Attila who is expected to change or Rapunzel who is expected to win people over. At no point is anyone told that they shouldn’t be prejudiced to begin with. 

There is no judge, jury, or lawyers. The king alone decides the fate of criminals, the Captain is expected to be the both the prosecutor and the ‘executioner’, which is a conflict of interest, and the defendant has no one to represent them unless they so happen to know a kind statesperson. Meaning you have to be either rich or well connected in order to even have a chance to defend yourself. 

Oh and there’s this...

Uh, yeah you do. You’re the flipping king. You make the law. You’re the one to bring charges against Attila, and nearly every other criminal in the show, in the first place. 

The show constantly wants us to view Frederic as simply an everyman who is only doing his job, but he’s not. He’s a ruler and as such he has powers and responsibilities that no one else has or ever will have. The series gives both him and Rapunzel all of the privileges of being in charge without holding them to account for the consequences of their actions. 

By not pointing out how wrong these actions are, the show winds up avocating them instead. When I call Tangled the Series authoritarian, this is why. Because authority is never questioned even when clearly wrong and nepotism is presented as the solution to conflicts as oppose to being the problem itself.

The Show Introduces Complex Issues but Then Oversimplifies the Conflicts Surrounding Those Issues

The creators of the show have constantly declared that the series is ‘not for kids’. That they were shooting for an older audience than the pre-school time slot they were given. Now ignoring the fact that Tangled was always going to have a built in audince of pre-teen girls and ignoring that children’s media can be mature, TTS lacks the nuance needed to viewed as anything other than a pantomime. 

As stated before, this episode alone ignores the very real issues interlaced within the conflict in order to give us an overly simple mystery that anyone over the age of five could figure out.  

It’s frustrating to watch the show constantly skirt towards the edge of complexity only to see it chicken out and go for the low hanging fruit instead. As a consequence the series winds up being for no one. Too shallow for adults and older teens, but too confused in its morals to be shown to small children and younger adolescents. 

I wouldn’t recommend this show to a parent, not without encouraging them to view the series either before or alongside their child in order to counteract it’s ‘lessons’ and I know parents within the fandom itself who’ve stopped showing newer episodes to their kids; stating that they want their child to be old enough to point out the harmful messages to before doing so. 

Once Again No One Learns Anything 

Rapunzel doesn’t learn that the system is flawed. Attila doesn’t learn to open up to people. Nobody learns to treat people with respect and to not judge others based on appearances alone.

The whole point of the episode is to just show off how much ‘better’ Rapunzel is than everyone else. The show constantly feels the need to tear down other characters in an effort to make its favs look good as opposed to just letting the mains grow as people. 

Conclusion

Tangled the tv series is no 12 Angry Men. It’s no Steven Universe/Gravity Falls/Avatar:TLA/She-Ra/Gargoyles/Batman:TAS either. It barely reaches the same level as the likes of DnD, Sonic SATAM, or Voltron. Interesting ideas but poor pacing, build up, and lack of follow through, with some naff decisions thrown into the mix bring things down in quality. And unlike the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon from the early 80s, TTS lacks the benefit of being a pioneer in the field of animation, where such flaws are more forgivable. 

[mbti-notes]

Hi mbti-notes, I hope you're doing well. I am an INFP young black American and the past few weeks have been such a nightmare. I obviously support the protests that have been taking place but I feel so hopeless at the same time. I've never been a fan of this country but the past few weeks have at least provided me with more clarity and conviction that there is nothing to be salvaged here. I have a friend who's also black but lives in europe and even we're at a loss for what to say to each (con't)

[con’t: other. I feel so angry and disgusted. I remember learning that as a part of anti-US propaganda during the Cold War, they’d show how black people have been treated in America and be like “this is how they treat their own people”. I’m not saying I support the USSR of course but it surprised me to hear that in the eyes of other countries, we’re as American as anyone else. It never felt that way. People can’t even protest police brutality without being faced with more police brutality. I’ve donated to bail funds, signed petitions, contacted my representatives about a piece of legislation that would help combat the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women but...I think the closest thing there is to a solution is for another Great Migration but this time, we just leave America. I feel bad saying that because obviously so many people don’t have the means to do so and it shouldn’t have to come to this but nobody wants us here. If the black panthers...]

It seems that tumblr disappeared the rest of your message, but I've read enough to detect some problematic thinking. It’s not about whether you’re “wanted”, it’s about the fact that you have a right to exist and be treated as human, equal to every other human under the law. It is beyond the scope of this blog to address politics and write political commentary. This blog primarily addresses individuals and how they cope with their circumstances. I won’t be able to understand all the experiences that you’ve had as a black American given such a short message from you. All I can do is bring to light your attitude and beliefs and how they affect your ability to cope and thrive in life. 

Developmentally, irrational pessimism is always something that INFPs should be vigilant about due to Fi-Si loop and the struggle to develop Ne big-picture thinking skills. There is certainly lots of injustice in the world, but this doesn't mean that there isn't also a lot of good in the world. There are many good people out there doing good things, otherwise, you’d have nothing to donate money to. There are also a lot of decent people who understand that racism is a big problem but don’t know what to do about it. Yet your mind is only ever trained on the pain and suffering - this indicates Fi extremes. I have a longstanding habit of observing how different people respond to challenges in life. For example, I see some black Americans out there protesting, some are educating people, some are attacking people, some are sowing anarchy, some are running for office, some are giving up, some are hiding, some are writing, some are leading legislative initiatives. Black Americans as a group share the burden of racism, but each person handles it in their own way. What is your response and why?

You focus on the problems, drowning in negative feelings, and perhaps even look for evidence to reinforce the belief that everything is irredeemable (misuse of Si), which means that you lack a big picture perspective. For your own well-being, perhaps you need to make wiser decisions about how you spend your time, where you focus your energy, and with whom you associate. Otherwise, you are only ever a victim of circumstance, bending and breaking with every gust of wind. If there are things/people in your life that exacerbate your tendency to be negative, it's up to you to adjust your decision making so that you are not always surrounded by the negative. Just as you keep physically healthy by not eating crap food, you should keep mentally healthy by not feeding yourself a constant diet of emotional negativity. For example, people tend to be much more pessimistic when they spend too much time on social media or consuming political commentary that is designed to be emotionally provocative. Perhaps there are healthier ways to spend your time. Whether you followed this or that tweet is of little significance if it only ends up with you feeling miserable.

With respect to moving: There are a variety of methods to measure the health and well-being of a society, and it's natural to think about how your country stacks up against others. Different societies have their own character and excel at different things. However, it's important to remember that there is no society without problems. Some countries are better at hiding their problems than others. Europe is no paradise, as there have been long running problems with colonialist and xenophobic attitudes. American society tends to be very extraverted and media driven, so its problems are often hanging out there for all to see, which might make them seem a lot worse than they really are.

Each aspect of society, whether you think it is positive or negative, is the result of a trade-off. For example, people often respect the U.S. for its staunch commitment to free speech, which allows for marginalized voices to be heard. But the trade-off is that you may get a more noisy and toxic social environment, as all voices get elevated and amplified. The question for you, as an individual, is whether the trade-offs are worth it for the kind of life that you would like to live. With the example of free speech, I’d rather have free speech, so I’m willing to tolerate all the noise and accept it as the cost of doing business. Nobody can make these sorts of judgments for you, as you are the best person to decide what's best for you. Thus, I'm not sure what to tell you. I only remind people that the decision making process works best when you give proper consideration to EVERY side of an issue, as opposed to being myopic, extreme, or one-sided.

Right now, there is a lot of frustration and anger floating around. Being so emotional basically means being myopic, as you are hyperfocused on the things that make you sad or angry. This will blind you to everything else. When you lose sight of the positive, Ne might start to believe that the grass is greener elsewhere. There's no denying that the problem of racism against black people runs very deep in American society, all the way back to the founding of the nation on the backs of slaves. But are you denying that progress has been made?

When people use the word "progress" in relation to history, they mainly refer to how things changed for the better. I think people too often forget that progress almost always comes at a steep COST. Society doesn’t change because people miraculously get “enlightened” en mass. No. People suffer, things get mangled, blood is shed, and there is a period of intense pain and sacrifice - these details tend to get glossed over in history classes as hindsight and nostalgia take over. Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin. Thinking that you can create something new and better without destroying what is old and obsolete is wishful thinking. To be clear, I'm not advocating destruction; I'm only saying that, in reality, you cannot escape destruction, as it is a necessary stage in the process of creation. If you are unlucky, you get to live during "interesting" times. But, viewed from a bigger perspective, it also means that you get to live during a time when you have a chance to make a difference and what you do matters. From this perspective, being alive right now is better than living during a time of being forced into accepting the status quo, is it not?

What is society other than the people comprising it? Societal problems are analogous to psychological problems in that they are deep-seated, long-running, festering, recurring, and difficult to resolve. I believe that there is a qualitative shift in attitude right now. It doesn't mean that racism will suddenly get fixed once and for all, but I've not seen such widespread attention and commitment to the problem in a long time. It actually gives me hope. I have older friends who've remarked that they suddenly feel transported back to the unrest of the 1960s. IMO, it means that another period of progress is on the horizon, but it also means that a time of intense turmoil is here. It seems that you focus on the turmoil and miss seeing the openings and opportunities for change.

Another thing that INFPs should always be vigilant about is a shaky relationship to reality and/or being unable to tackle problems in a realistic way (i.e. poor Ne and Te development). Reality contains everything, including the good and the bad, so it’s no use to try to pretend that one or the other doesn’t exist. You will always make better decisions by taking BOTH the good and the bad into consideration. Some INFPs get stuck in trying to wish away the bad, and some drown in the bad and disconnect from everything good. 

Just as a child picks up a mix of psychological issues from their parents, as a member of society, your identity is forged through your relationship to your society's (problematic) history. I don't see how a "great migration" is any solution. Don’t forget that technology has made our world significantly smaller, so it’s a lot harder to distance from these problems. As long as you carry the scars of your home, no matter where you go, unresolved pain will continue to haunt you and hurt you. There is historical evidence that utopian thinking never leads to anything resembling a utopia. Utopian thinking is what people resort to when they are incapable of confronting the problems of reality. When it comes to human psychology, there is no way to wipe the slate completely clean without confronting and addressing the mistakes and sins of the past - this is what social unrest is meant to achieve. To believe that you can/should “start from scratch” is often a sign of Te grip in INFPs, as they want to violently wipe out the accumulated burdens of Si loop. 

Perhaps there are benefits for you, as an individual, to move away, as you might find happiness in a different sort of life. But what happens when the advocates give up and walk off? At the societal level, good people moving away only leaves the bad actors to wreak havoc on the poor and innocent. Certainly, some individuals do move away and successfully build a better life for themselves. However, some people move away only to discover that they miss home dearly, and they end up roaming aimlessly, lonely, miserable, bitter, or disappointed. What separates the two groups? You will find a better life when you know exactly what you're looking for and you're realistic about whether the new place will meet those terms and conditions. You will NOT find a better life if you're merely running away from unhappiness, fueled by wishful thinking that the grass is greener "anywhere but here". It's up to you to be honest about what's happening with you.

[iamshadow21]

How can we help people with disabilities? For example, autistic people who see the world differently.*

* This question was posted on another social media site. What follows is my answer. 1) Treat us as people, not as less. An adult or an older child being talked to in a baby voice is not on, regardless of how their disability presents. Talk to us at age appropriate level. If we're interested in something, get excited about it with us, rather than telling us we're boring. Sharing our interest is our way of trying to communicate. We love a thing. We're opening up ourselves to you. It might not be how you're used to doing a conversation, but it is meaningful communication, and it means we want to share that excitement with you. That's a big deal. Recognise it. 2) Our diagnosis is none of your business, unless we feel comfortable talking to you about it. It's really none of your business if we were diagnosed as a kid, an adult, self-diagnosed, or questioning. It's none of your business if our autism has changed its presentation as we've aged. It's really none of your business if you think you know what autism looks like, and we don't match up with your preconceptions. And please, if we're verbal, dressed appropriately, out in public and unattended, it's not a compliment to tell us how well we're doing. We're just as autistic when we're 'passing' as when we really aren't. Passing for normal is not an achievement, it's a monumental effort that most of us feel long term health effects from if we have to do it daily. Allowing natural autistic behaviours is something a lot of us have to relearn in adulthood to manage our anxiety. An adult flapping, pacing, tapping, or playing with a stim toy isn't being babyish or playing at autism, they're trying to take care of themselves. Don't stare or tut or tell us we're embarrassing you. (Telling us our Tangle is awesome and you want one is totally okay, though.) 3) Our sex life is none of your business, unless we're in a sexual relationship with you. Just because we're autistic doesn't mean we can't consent. That said, if there's someone being weird and intimate with us when we're a minor and they're in a position of authority, make sure we're okay. Compliance based therapies heavily used with autistic children (like ABA) make autistic children very vulnerable to sexual abuse, because they teach children to do things that are uncomfortable, painful or unnatural to them to please adults for rewards. 4) Make a conscious choice to be okay with difference, be it physical, intellectual, neurological, whatever. This might be harder than it sounds. Disability can come with mobility needs, sensory needs, dietary needs and routine based needs. It might require communication devices or sign language, or a picture-based communication system, even if to you, the person 'seems' verbal. It's rare for an autistic person to have no difficulties with verbal communication, and if you've only ever seen them happy or relaxed, you might not know they need to use their phone to communicate when they're upset or overwhelmed. Also, non verbal autistics might have a couple of words, scripted speech, or echolalic phrases they can use when conditions are right, even though they primarily use AAC or sign. Verbal ability isn't a fixed thing. It fluctuates. Be patient if we're struggling. It's more frustrating for us than for you. 5) Everyone's disability is unique. No two autistic people are the same. Likes, dislikes, sensitivities, strengths, difficulties. An autistic person might be sensory seeking, non verbal, highly intelligent, low anxiety, highly organised. They might be highly verbal, high anxiety, low executive function, mild intellectual disability, dyslexic, supertaster. They could have any combination of interests and personality traits, and come combined with a whole array of other disabilities. Don't think because you know one autistic person, you know every autistic person. We're individuals. 6) Listen to us, not to Autism Speaks or 'autism moms'. Our experience is unique to us. It cannot be fully understood by a neurotypical bystander, regardless of how close that relationship is. Read books by autistic people (there are a lot). Donate to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network or Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. Don't light it up blue, put puzzle pieces on your car, or spread anti-vax rhetoric (which is fake science and basically hinges on the fact that a lot of people would rather have dead kids than autistic ones). Watch documentaries produced by autistic people about their experiences. Check out neurowonderful's Youtube series Ask An Autistic. 7) Don't assume we're straight. Don't assume we're cisgender. Don't assume we don't understand the complexities of our multifaceted identities. Gender and sexuality variance is present in autistic people, just as it is in neurotypical people. In fact, there's actually evidence there is a higher proportion of transgender, nonbinary and genderqueer people in the autistic community than in the genpop. Our experience of sexuality and gender is also viewed through our lens of autistic experience, and there are terms created specifically by autistic people to encapsulate this (like gendervague). 8) Don't assume we can't have relationships, friendships, and families outside of our parents and siblings. Don't assume we can't be awesome parents. Don't assume we can't make informed choices about our bodies and procreation. Autistic people have been here as long as people have been here. I'm from a multigenerational family myself, with both male and female autistic people, stretching back at least five generations, anecdotally (further than that, highly probably, but we don't have the information). 9) Don't think we'd be better off dead. This is why adults and children are murdered by parents and caregivers every year without legal repercussions. Our lives have value. The next time you see a news article where a parent cries about killing their child, don't rationalise that 'it must be so hard' to be taking care of us. That's essentially saying we're responsible for our own murder, and that it was justifiable homicide. MURDER IS MURDER. If you want to campaign for better respite and support in your area, GREAT, but don't give parents who murder their children a free pass. Parenting is hard, but people have a choice, and we must stop allowing people who make the choice to kill to get away with murder. Whenever it happens, someone else, somewhere, thinks murder is an appropriate solution to the problem of a disabled person needing care in their life, and another irreplaceable, unique person dies. 10) We have the right to exist in public spaces. Yes, that autistic person having a meltdown might be disrupting your shopping and hurting your ears. I can guarantee their life is harder than yours right then. Have some compassion (not pity) and give them some space. We have the right to be in restaurants, in theatres, in libraries and in schools. If you think a person with a disability being in those spaces is going to have a negative effect on your children, maybe you should think about your parenting, rather than about segregation.

[neutralvlddiscourse]

In defense of Sheith: Power imbalance, brother figure, truth about media influences

Power imbalance is an argument used by Klantis against Sheith. It states that Shiro is 7 years Keith’s senior and his mentor, which warrants it an unhealthy ship. The argument is perfectly logical, but it remains abstract in nature. I will be using the argument in an abstract manner against Klance first, then I will be addressing the theory’s application in reality.

Power imbalance as a argument falls to invalidate Sheith as it will also invalidate Klance. Power imbalance is found in all relations, from friendships to relationships and familial relations. There are also instances of power imbalance in Klance, for example, Keith is known to be a superior pilot compared to Lance, while Lance is known as the sharpshooter of the team. Keith is held in higher regards for his piloting skills, which causes Lance to express some of his jealousy and bitterness through his verbal skills. Keith almost never defend himself against Lance when Lance makes fun of him because 1. Keith can’t be bothered/sees the truth in the abuse that Lance had hurls at him and thus doesn’t fight back (his character studies/metas often cite his insecurities as the reason, so essentially, Lance is poking fun at Keith’s insecurities eg calling him a dropout) 2. Lance often passes off his insults on Keith as a joke and thus other characters (including the audience) believes that it is simply a banter between characters and does not think twice of such incidents. It may seemed like a joke but they stays on Keith’s mind. eg his vlog talking about how he couldnt connect with people

The underlying power imbalance is due to Lance’s wit and the fact that he is pro-social. He knows the Vol-tron cheer because he hangs out with other people (it is a group cheer so one is only introduced to it in a group) while Keith doesn’t and thus he doesn’t know the cheer. Keith’s cluelessness is stemmed from his ignorance of cheering, a people-activity that he had unlikely been a part of, so Lance is more priviledged in that aspect. Keith’s ignorance of said cheer was also the joke in that scene, and Lance had mocked him with “we will work on it” like Keith is an idiot and that he was supposed to know what Lance was talking about. It was a scene where the audience laughed at Keith, and since Keith doesn’t understand what’s going on, he is not laughing along, and that’s a code red when it comes to jokes. One can joke at another’s expense if it is consensual and that everyone is having a good time. Furthermore, it is an issue that Keith brings up probably months after that incident and blamed it on the fact that HE couldn’t connect with people, not because people didn’t bother explaining/teaching him how to better socialise. Lance’s superior wit and social skills had been used against Keith in this simple scene.

(before yall lance stans get on my ass ill let you know that i love lance, but what he did wasnt very nice. yes it is just a kids show, but sheith is being held to a high pedastal while lance isnt. it is just hypocritical to dismiss this incident as a case of abuse due to power imbalance just because you love lance.)

Now onto addressing Shiro’s mentor status and his brotherly role. First of, I believe that it is not the best idea for one to date their mentor/brother figure as it is a breeding ground for grooming, however love also means trusting that said grooming doesn’t happen, love also means to not groom. A simple example, your parents are far wiser than you, older than you, richer than you etc but they don’t use it to groom you (unless they are abusive). People are not passive objects that let theories unfold on them, we make choices to not hurt others. An abled body person has certain priviledges over a physically-disabled person so that does mean that they aren’t allow to fall in love and get married? That is ableist and condescending towards people who are less priviledged.

From a more psychoanalytical POV, dating a brother figure is considered to be rather perverse, but we must be reminded that modern psychology is built on extremely Western values/culture. In Northeast Asian culture, it is perfectly normal and romanticised for a 3rd year high school male student to want to date a 1st year high school female student and vice versa. In my schooling experience, some pre-teens and teenagers have formed pacts where they address each other as a brother/sister and care for each other as such. Some of them also ended up dating their ‘older brother’. This clique behaviour is paralleled in Western alternative culture where wolf-kins form their community and goes around doing stereotypically wolf stuff and treat each other like brother/sister in their pacts. This pattern is believed to aid in teens’ identity-formation and thus normal in puberty, where teens try to find themselves outside of their home/family which could include forming familial ties with other non-family peers. Given Keith’s age, this could explain why he said that Shiro is like a brother to him, it is basic teenage psychology and if you don’t know bat shit about it and assume that Keith thinks of Shiro as a literal brother, then you’d be pretty dense. He could have been just expressing a hyberbole to get his intense feeling across during an occasion where someone he loves is literally leaving him, he’d express his deepest feelings for Shiro to stay.

In Western vocabulary of sexuality, it is often commented upon men that they’re ‘a daddy’, or ‘an uncle’, or ‘a bear’. (okay granted uncle would have been more in niche communities and you might not have heard it before but im just trying to make a point here) It doesn’t mean that someone literally wants to fuck their dad or a bear, but rather the person they’re describing bear attributes to maybe a dad or a bear. One may argue that ‘oh you’re fetishizing bears/fathers’ and no, they’re not, they’re fetishizing a trait associated. I am an Asian woman so I know fetishization and its impact better than most of yall Klantis. I know fully and well the impacts of fetishization but fetishizing bears/fathers have no social cost. (also data on klanti’s overwhelming white demographic: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNLlB64PD9k0bxG1bw3Crq5DE_VQhY_on_orWtuGIogN9gAQ/viewanalytics)

In Northeast Asian vocabulary of sexuality, ‘father’ and ‘bear’ are unheard of, but ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ are. (Feel free to correct me, I got my sources from reality TV shows/dramas lmao media shapes sexuality so it is valid evidence) Nobody wants to fuck their siblings, in fact, they think that it is really gross. It is like watching those sister-centric anime and be like “oh shes hot” but when they think about their actual sister they’d be like “lmao ew wtf my sister is gross af” and they will start listing at least 100 things about their sisters that they hate. Again, people are not passive objects that just swallow whatever media tells them. In fact, media can be used to deter such perversions. Eg if you are a child and you’re watching some serial killing movie, you parents would frown upon and condemn it. This is socialisation, where one sees something and then process other’s reactions to it to cement their beliefs. If you see pedophilia on TV and everyone around you are like eww wtf, you’re most likely to follow it as we are social creatures.

This is why I am fuckin pissed when Klantis attack Asian artists. We have different values/different take on sexuality. Just because modern psychology (with Western roots) says that it is perverse to date a familial-figure doesn’t mean that it is universal. (Therefore I argue that psychology is not an empirical science and the argument that Western Klantis propose are not to be applied to Asian Sheith shippers.) PLEASE LEAVE ASIAN ARTISTS ALONE. Stop forcing your values down our throat under the pretension of ‘progressiveness’. It is fucking insulting, condescending and racist. You have already colonised China, is it not enough? Do you have to force our beliefs to be aligned with yours, whilst disregarding our cultures? Are you seeking to colonise our minds? 

(If you still don’t understand why I am outraged, just read Freud and how psychology came to be, please, stop being so ignorant and harasse people for it. I will be addressing Klanti’s arguments from a sociological POV in my next post)

note: part 2 is justifying power imbalance since i kinda digressed on western vs neasian shippers out of anger 

[losdesnudoscas-blog]

The World's Vanity

Has there ever been a place where people do not get treated as human beings but treated as tools? If not, welcome to Earth. The majority of civilizations around the world are ruled by misogynistic governments, dictatorships or kings. Women in this world are treated as objects rather than living beings. The film, La Pantalla Desnuda by Florence Jaugey, takes place in Nicaragua. People here in the U.S, like myself do not take into consideration that these Nicaraguan people go through the same things everyone does. To be more specific, in the film it takes a perspective that is posed in order for the view to relate to its raw nature. Since it takes place in a third world country, the effects of their poverty come into play with the struggles they have. Florence Jaugey tackles the issues, such as oppression or misogynistic views. This film depicts what women have to deal with on a deal basis by including raw scenes that show women's struggle to deal with the double-standard set by society, express their sexuality and a way to maintain empowerment.    

Sexual orientation is a virtue that is unequal on both sides but just like always, women get it the worst. La Pantalla Desnuda takes place in Nicaragua, where the people are in this mostly general catholic perspective of both men and women. Children who are born in the United States that are first generation and have parents that migrated, still place these ideals onto their children. This is relevant in the sense that Alex and Esperanza are attending a Catholic Aragarian, meaning that religion also plays a role in their academic and social life. However, it is apparent through the film that not everyone abides by the "holy" aspect of how people should behave. The movie then proceeds to show the intimate scene between Alex and Esperanza, Alex suggest that they should record themselves having sex. Esperanza takes note of this and heeds to tell him to turn it off because she does not like the idea of being recorded. He does as she asks but he then does it again and she brushes it off her shoulder. One thing to notice is since Alex was recording the video, his face did not show. He then tells her that it will be a memory for them when they are older. Now here is where the injustice comes. It is injust for Alex to have recorded that video without having consent from Esperanza. This none consent that comes from Esperanza can be due to the fact that she does not want anyone to question her purity, being raised with Catholicism. Yet it is her right to express her own sexuality and show how she can ignore the set double-standards.

In La Pantalla Desnuda, there is the scene in which Esperanza is in the bathroom and she is being teased about her sex tape being released. This is seen after Ocatvio had release the video and posted it on a social platform, specifically what they call NicaTube.The tease that they play is they make moaning noises similar to what Esperanza does in the video with Alex. In the movie they mimic the noise she made of "Ya, ya, ya". They mock her moaning in the sense they are calling her a slut and that she is sexually active. The girls in the bathroom put up the façade that they are better than Esperanza because they still consider themselves "pure". Esperanza is then put into thinking that she is not who she is just because she is being judged for having sex. This whole demenor can be because of the fact that they are in a religious school and are taught to save themselves for marriage. However, only women are told to do this and not men. Why is that men are praised for being sexually active but women are degraded? In another scene in La Pantalla Desnuda is where Alex is leaving his classroom and he is greeted by Octavio and Octavio praises him for sleeping with Esperanza and because he has a video about it. Something to note about the video is that only Esperanza's face is shown and not Alex's. Could this be because if a man is the thumbnail for a sexual video it will receive less view than it were to be a woman? This goes onto show the double-standards society has. If a woman is being sexually active, it is seen as sexually desirable by men by as an insult to the purity that women allegedly have to maintain. The struggles that women have for their expression on their sexuality should be as equal as men. In this movie, this is not the case. One important point that I want to state is that Octavio's family is religious and yet he does not abide by the religious aspect of doing good. Octavio's mom is a contradicting character because she can sympathize with the way that Esperanza is seen because she is a woman herself. She then notices the strange behavior that Octavio has. Since Octavio's mom has seen the video, it is a weird way that she does not try and defend Esperanza. To jump around for a bit, towards somewhat the middle/end of the movie, Octavio's mom tries to destroy Alex's phone because it can be used as evidence to use against Octavio in order to blame him for the video. Why does the mom do this and not bring justice to Esperanza? She is a catholic woman and she chose to destroy the personal identity of another girl to keep her son from getting in trouble. How does this abide to the religious aspect of right over wrong? It is sad to think that women themselves bring each other down when one wants to be sexually active and empower themselves.

Women who are raised along religion are taught to be powerful because of their status to bear kids and be the foundation of a house, yet it is these confines that bring down the empowerment of women. This film's main aspect is how a young woman is being brought down for expressing her sexuality. Why can men be sexual beings but women cannot? This question is an important one to address because of the background that this movie took place. In a previous paragraph I mentioned that this movie is taken place in Nicaragua at a religious school. Now I will take the whole movie in analysis by the way it depicts women in different aspects. A scene in the movie that shows women being empowered is the sexual desire that Esperanza has because it is virtue that every woman have the right to have. The specific scene that I am talking about is when Esperanza wants to have consensual sex at the what seems to be a motel.  However, boys growing up are not really watched upon with what they do with their bodies. Women have to live in constant fear if they are sexual beings. A scene from the movie that was graphic on what women experience is when two guys follow Esperanza and eventually ask her to get in their truck with then but she refuses, which make the guys following her angry and that is when they try to rape her. Now to dissect this scene a little more. The men in the truck before they try to rape her are calling her in a somewhat passive-aggressive manner in order to sway Esperanza. Is this correct thought? In actually, the way that men talk to Esperanza is in the aspect of how they would talk to a prostitute. After she gets in the car, they treat her as if she was a tool of pleasure.  It is astonishingly scare to think that some men think it is okay to rape women because they are sexually active. This treatment of women is just not correct. Technology has amplified this by so much. With the technology that we have today, it is very easy to manipulate the way women are portrayed. In social media, women are exposed on the daily and so are men but it doesn’t happen as much as women. A quote from the song "Bandera Negra" that is supporting the idea that women should do what they please and only for themselves is, "On the platform wearing high heels not because I'm a piece of ass, I like looking good while I sing on the mic". This quote/lyric goes to show that even high heels are stigmatizes with sexuality of women. Articles of clothing have always been associated with how women act, which is completely preposterous. Men do not have these problems, however when men wear pink, they are suggested to be gay which is also wrong. An image by Lily Avcevedo that shows how girls have to be pretty and proper regardless of where they are is where it is a little girl and a blue background with her thoughts leading to memories. An interesting point to notice is in one of her depictions, a little girl sitting on a swing set with guns holding up the swing set itself. This can be interpreted it in many ways but the one that is obvious is that the little girl looks like she is accustomed to that lifestyle.

The way governments and social rule have been established is with men on top and only men. This is how women are placed so low on socio-economic statuses. A specific quote from "Bandera Negra" to tackle this aspect is, " I don’t look for power because I am anarchist" Women in other parts of the globe are seen as way more superior then men for reasons such as women being able to give life and they have superior mental strength. These patriarchal systems are still currently set in place without regards of women. A quote/lyric from "Bandera Negra" that is symbolizing unity is "I fight the power that colonizes minds". Furthermore, the quote/lyric relates to how Europeans came to the Americas and the United States to colonize people's minds in to a singularity that they thought was right. Rebeca Lane is coming from another third world country, Guatemala. She is seen in many views. Her being an anarchist, she can be seen as a radical because she does not follow everyone else does. Feminist believe that women are equal to men however, technology has shaped this to be out of proportion. Misogynistic men think that when women gain power they will bring chaos. Another thing that these men think is that since men have always been in control, women could not do the same as men. The movie empowers women in being comfortable with who they are and not to be ashamed of who they are because they are human being just like everyone else. Women of color have it the worst in the world. These women have to struggle so much through racism and oppression. A graffiti art image that supported the empowerment of women is by Malu. The graffiti depicts a beautiful woman with hibiscus flowers in her hair which implies that she is a beautifully strong woman. Seeing that this is in the streets, Malu wants to show people on the streets that women are beautiful regards of where or who the people are. Another quote/lyric from "Bandera Negra" that demonstrates that women have a voice regardless of skin color is " I will cut silenced throats with one slash". This quote/lyric is one of the best symbols that women need to express their voices and to stand up together so they can be heard in this world.

In conclusion, Florence Jaugey tackles the issues, such as supression on women by women themselves and men. This film shows what women have to go through on the day by day basis by including scenes that show women's efforts in order to deal with the double-standard set by society, express their sexuality and a way to maintain empowerment. Women are equal to men in every way and deserve recognition. The film La Pantalla Desnuda, does an good job of showing how women are treated. This can be applied anywhere in the world and regardless of religious aspect. The dark side of this film is that the movie shows women degrading each other instead of standing up and uniting with each other to rise against oppression.The women of Central America that were mentioned in this essay are examples of beautiful strong women who empower who they are and do not let anyone stop them. The film gives all of its viewers a perspective that not every movie has a happy ending. Technology's advancement can also be seen in this movie more in a negative perspective since the way the video spread was through a phone and that an internet café shut down.

   Works Cited Page

Lane, Rebeca. Bandera Negra. C.S.O Casa Naranja. 2014

La Pantalla Desnuda by Florence Jaguey

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[isaacscrawford]

Doctors Do Know Best. Exhibit A: The Charlie Gard Case.

By SAURABH JHA, MD

For American conservatives, Britain’s NHS is an antiquated Orwellian dystopia. For Brits, even those who don’t love the NHS, American conservatives are better suited to spaghetti westerns, such as Fistful of Dollars, than reality.

The twain is unlikely to meet after the recent press surrounding Charlie Gard the infant, now deceased, with a rare, fatal mitochondrial disorder in which mitochondrial DNA is depleted – mitochondrial depletion disorder (MDD). In this condition, the cells lose their power supply and tissues, notably in the brain, die progressively and rapidly.

The courts forbade Charlie’s parents from taking him for a last dash of hope to the United States. This confirmed for many conservatives the perils of a government-run healthcare system, where the state decides who lives and who dies through Death Panels.

Ted and Mike, whose healthcare reform might affect many curable little Charlies, were moved by the plight of an incurable Charlie. No European will understand the science behind their sentiment – if you care so much about a sick incurable baby, why don’t you care about sick, cure.

Brits will never get the importance conservatives place on individual choice, even if that choice is forlorn, and of the lure of medical heroism. Conservatives seldom acknowledge that modern medicine reaches its limitations too quickly for Death Panels to be effective. Charlie was given a grim prognosis by doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), arguably the finest hospital for sick children in the world.able babies, they’d ask.

GOSH might not have the endowments of its American counterparts. It is an orthodox British hospital with creaking staircases, the sort where I trained, where doctors have incredible clinical acumen, paranormal common sense, and dabble freely in paternalism. Doctors know best and are not ashamed to say so. When doctors at GOSH say death is imminent, Death Panelists are rendered unemployed, unless there’s a miracle to slay. For Charlie, that miracle was a New York neurologist offering an untested therapy.

The reaction to Charlie’s plight is as instructive as the reaction to the reaction to his plight. It’s as if everyone took the Rorschach test simultaneously.

Charlie’s plight was felt by the Pope. The Pontiff is a busy chap and can’t possibly Tweet in support of every dying child in GOSH. But once the media portrayed his suffering, everyone jumped on the bandwagon. The Pope was joined by Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Theresa May, Nigel Farage and even the notoriously unsentimental Jeremy Corbyn. This is the power of the identifiable victim.

Some have wondered whether our preoccupation with stories such as Charlie’s diverts our moral and financial resources from tackling deaths from malaria in Africa – i.e. we don’t care about deaths from malaria because we care too much about one dying infant. In this classic utilitarian fallacy, the utilitarian treats moral sentiments as a zero-sum game with opportunity costs. The truth, as Adam Smith pointed out in Theory of Moral Sentiments, is that we’ll always be more perturbed by events proximate to us, the identifiable victim, than random people who don’t appear on our Twitter timeline. If Charlie hadn’t surfaced in our news channels, we still wouldn’t be fretting about deaths from malaria in far off countries we’ve never heard about.

Charlie’s case showed the limitations of not just modern medicine but modern medical ethics.

When all hopes seemed lost, Charlie’s parents did what many do today – they consulted Dr. Google, who didn’t disappoint. Their search revealed a New York neurologist – Dr. Michio Hirano, a researcher and an expert in mitochondrial disorders.

When hope resurfaced so did the controversy. The first point of controversy was that the nucleoside therapy Dr. Hirano was offering was not scientific – i.e. there was no proven benefit of the nucleoside in the specific variant (RRM2B) of Charlie’s MDD – it hadn’t even been tested on animals with that variant. GOSH, the High Court and the terribly unoriginal European Court, used the absence of proven efficacy in their justification for stopping the parents from taking the child to the US.

“Not scientific”, a compelling statement as no one can argue with science, needs parsing. It is possible for a treatment for a rare disease to have promising results in a small trial in the US, but still not be available in the NHS either because the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) hasn’t gotten around to approving it or is waiting for more evidence. This wasn’t the case with Charlie’s disorder, but my point is what may be unscientific today may truly be unscientific or may simply be waiting for NICE to schedule a conference call.

Charlie would have been the first patient with the RRM2B variant to have received the nucleoside therapy. Though we don’t know for certain, it is highly unlikely Charlie would have responded favorably. Had he responded favorably, the treatment’s efficacy would be certain. This is because Charlie’s condition had a 100 % fatality and anything that’d have saved him, gotten him off the ventilator and breathing spontaneously, and restored his motor function, would either be a parachute or a prophet – you don’t need a double blind, placebo-controlled, randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of a drug for a condition which is imminently and uniformly fatal.

The neurologist was accused of having financially conflict of interest in nucleoside therapy, which he has strongly denied.

This familiar moral dilemma, which brings science closer to morality than necessary, begs legitimate questions. Was the doctor genuinely motivated by a desire to help or by making more money? Was there truly therapeutic equipoise or was he selling snake oil?

Science being morally neutral means that the neurologist’s motivation for helping was moot. The therapy either worked or didn’t. And if it worked no one would care if the doctor is Satan. If it didn’t work it scant mattered if he were the Pontiff. His financial conflict of interest is relevant only because it indicates whether equipoise – i.e. that the therapy may work –  is justified.

To emphasize, we must believe that science, i.e. proven treatment benefits, is morally neutral –  because it would be silly not to – I mean it’d be like saying a treatment would work better if the prescribing doctor were more pious.

But, seemingly, equipoise is not morally neutral. What we’re saying is that the uncertainty, and I repeat the uncertainty, that a treatment may work depends, to some extent, on the motivations of who is calling the experiment. This is understandable because medicine is replete with stories of sellers of snake oil. But there’s a large coastline of plausibility far removed from snake oil.

Dr. Hirano wasn’t selling snake oil. He was selling a plausible but untested treatment to desperate parents. The nucleoside therapy had modest efficacy in a variant of Charlie’s disorder (TK 2). But had never been tested in the RR2MB mutation, which Charlie had. It was unscientific because it was unproven – it wasn’t implausible – it certainly wasn’t snake oil.

Ironically, precision medicine exposed the unscientific nature of the nucleoside therapy. Imagine if you couldn’t sequence. You wouldn’t know that MDD had variants – that is you wouldn’t know whether Charlie’s MDD was the TK2 or the RR2MB variant, it’d all be the same. Would the nucleoside therapy, which had worked in a handful of patients with the TK2 variant, still have been unscientific? This is not a dig against precision medicine. I’m merely asking for less dogmatism in what we call unscientific, given that the line is so thin between groups in which therapies work and don’t work.

This takes me to the desperation of Charlie’s parents. I can’t even begin to imagine what they were going through. I recall how I reacted at the very slight possibility that my older son, when he was three weeks old, had pyloric stenosis. My frontal lobe stopped working. Were I Charlie’s parents, I’d have fought tooth and nail and eked every possibility. I’d have done exactly what they did.

Parents of children who have terminal illnesses have nothing to lose, so they pursue any hope, no matter how hopeless the hope is. Some ethicists find this sentiment repugnant. You can see why the ethicist’s ire is drawn. Picture this – desperate parents willing to do anything, offered false hope by a doctor who knows that their condition is hopeless, who knows the treatment is unproven, and who is merely taking advantage of their predicament, like a parasite. Won’t you be disgusted by that doctor?

Let’s reframe this. A doctor offers hope to desperate parents who have nothing to lose except hope itself. The doctor believes that denying hope, no matter how hopeless, will be crueler than giving hope. Incidentally, Lord Krishna, one of the many Gods of Hindus, said that a lie which makes someone feel better is better than a thousand truths which make a person feel worse.

Are you still disgusted with the doctor prescribing hope? I’d say “repugnance” is a rather strong sentiment in this ethical gray zone, where the answer depends on how the situation is framed. To believe medical ethics is as absolute as Newton’s Third Law of Motion betrays an alarming level of judgment.

Charlie would have been the first to receive the nucleoside therapy for his condition. In any trial of medical treatment, there is always an index patient – the first to receive the unproven therapy. This is an inviolable fact, whether the unproven therapy later proves itself or not.

Would we be offended if Charlie was the first to receive the unproven treatment as part of a research trial with a hypothesis where the researcher purposefully set out to collect data and specified the outcomes in advance?

It was unethical to experiment unproven therapy with Charlie. Paradoxically, it was also unethical to give Charlie unproven treatment because it wasn’t an experiment.

What then in modern era is the difference between a neurologist responding to desperate parents by giving unproven therapy and a neurologist responding to desperate parents by giving unproven therapy as part of a trial? It’s easy seeing that both scenarios are experimental. But there is a difference. The latter comes with regulatory oversight, the former doesn’t. So, a major gripe here is the absence of regulatory oversight.

This wouldn’t have been the first-time unproven therapy has been offered to sick children with fatal conditions short circuiting a trial. Take the case of surgery for complex congenital heart diseases such as Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. The first time a surgeon operated on a neonate with this condition, the treatment was unproven and, therefore, unscientific. The treatment was offered to desperate parents who believed they had nothing to lose. Indeed, the operative morbidity and mortality for early cardiac surgery for congenital heart disease was so high that whatever short life span these babies had was curtailed by the surgery – i.e. surgery made matters worse. Then the heart surgeons learnt from their errors, improved their technique and patients lived longer. Today, patients with complex congenital heart disease are old enough to worry about cancer and dementia.

Again, the ethics of offering an unproven treatment to a sick child of desperate parents is trickier than first appears. While it may make us balk, the first few recipients of unproven therapy can be made worse, even if the therapy later does net good. I’m not terribly fond of utilitarian reasoning – greatest good to the greatest number – but utilitarianism makes its way through multiple avenues. One argument, which I’m partial to, is that if you relax the access to therapies which haven’t been adequately scientifically vetted for rare diseases with no cures, drug developers will have little incentive to produce genuine cures. This is a compelling and highly plausible conjecture, but it is utilitarian at its core – i.e. we believe that easy access for a few could lead to net harms for many.

Some have defended the action of GOSH by saying it is not about costs, only effectiveness. This is understandable – no one wants to muddy the issue by talking about costs – but disingenuous. Of course, costs are important when the taxpayer is footing the bill. Charlie was ventilated. He’d have to be shifted by air ambulance and accompanied by trained personnel. Medical resources aren’t free even in the NHS. And given that the effectiveness of the nucleoside therapy is nearly zero, the cost-effectiveness would be nearly infinite.

Charlie’s parents had raised funds to help with the costs. This evokes a familiar sentiment in the NHS – should they be allowed to pursue treatment simply because they can afford it? The NHS prides itself, rightly so, on equity – no one is denied proven treatment because of inability to pay. But it’s hard seeing how equity is disrupted if someone decides to pay for futile treatment. Furthermore, Britain has a parallel private system in which proven treatment is accelerated for those who can pay. The Brits, when they want, seem perfectly capable of tolerating inequity.

The crux of the matter was the tension between the welfare of the child and the wishes of the parents. When I was a junior doctor working in an emergency department in London, we were counselled not to bow to the demands of parents and prescribe antibiotics for febrile children. Doctors, even junior doctors, knew best.

The trickier situation is when parents refuse treatment for their sick child. Doctors have the law on their side here and you can understand why. If parents of a child with meningococcal septicemia are conscientious objectors of synthetic therapy and decide that antibiotics for meningitis aren’t indicated, their wishes can’t supersede medical necessity. That is if parents clash with doctors, the doctors will prevail, and the child will receive life-saving antibiotics against the wishes of the parents, and rightly so. Let me state this in no uncertain terms – the courts agree that doctors know best.

Neither medical paternalism, nor the fight against it, is absolute. Doctors do know best, but “best” is a spectrum. For example, the courts can’t force a child to be vaccinated against the wishes of the parents. Few would dispute that vaccinations are beneficial to both the individual and society. But the courts distinguish between a proximate harm and a probabilistic harm to the child.

Would subjecting Charlie to unproven therapy worsen his welfare? Arguably, yes – there’s a fate worse than death, and being on a ventilator prolonging death senselessly is a form of suffering, no less because it can’t be articulated. Does this come under the antibiotics – meningitis domain (proximate harm) or the vaccination domain (probabilistic harm)? I’d be inclined to put it towards the former, unless I was Charlie’s parents. But you can see that this, too, is in the ethical gray zone.

There’s no doubt that the doctors in GOSH made a good clinical call. But every now and then the medical profession encounters an outlier and responding to an outlier needs more than clinical acumen.

The matter reached the European Court – an institution which excels itself at irrelevance by saying nothing new. It’s hard not concluding that a drama was made of a crisis in a tricky realm where each actor wanted to stamp their absolutism. Would it really have been the world’s greatest travesty if Charlie had been taken to the US to receive an unproven therapy? Could GOSH have handled the matter more prudently? Was a legal injunction really necessary? Could the NHS have avoided been morally scolded by Ted Cruz?

Of note, when Dr. Hirano examined Charlie at GOSH he concluded that the brain damage could not be reversed. Perhaps if the doctors at GOSH had incorporated Dr. Hirano as part of their multidisciplinary team at the outset, thus respecting the parent’s preferences, the legal drama could have been avoided. NHS hospitals have something to learn from their American counterparts.

For conservatives, the Charlie Gard story affirms that the NHS is a tyrannical apparatus which conspires to rob people of their fundamental human rights and that Brits submit meekly to medical paternalism. In this tragic story, no one has been more naively absolutist than the conservatives. Calling the NHS “tyrannical” when it saves many poor kids without bankrupting their parents is absurd. This noble institution could, however, do with better PR, because it has come across as inflexible and dogmatic instead of compassionate and scientific. For both the National Health Service and the Great Ormond Street Hospital, this is a huge travesty.

Saurabh Jha is a contributing editor to THCB.

                        Article source:The Health Care Blog